Ben Elton - Inconceivable

Dear Penny

Last night’s dinner with Trevor and his boyfriend Kit was great fun, despite Sam getting me a bit upset before we left.

Sam and Trevor are of course colleagues in lunch at the Beeb and are terribly funny when they start sneering at the more awful of the artists they have to hand over all our licence fees to. Trevor was telling us about these ghastly Oxbridge-educated yobbos whose job is to make jokes about football on some beery late-night sports chat show. It’s called A Game of Two Halves and it’s Trevor’s biggest hit. Apparently the rough idea of the show (I haven’t seen it) is that clips of various sporting events are played and then the regular panel members compete with each other to see who can mention their penises most often.

It was nice to have a really good laugh. We always do with Trevor and Kit. Trevor is good at taking the piss out of himself and it seems he’s become a victim of his own success with this alternative sports quiz he’s developed. Two of the blokes on it have inevitably been picked up for representation by the bull-like Aiden Fumet. Fumet has been to see Trevor and explained that, on the strength of their current “ballistic” status, his “turns” must immediately be given their own sitcoms. When Trevor asked if before committing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of licence payers’ money to an untried project it might be possible to see a script, Aiden Fumet immediately turned into the spiritual skinhead he is and called Trevor “a pointless timeserving cunt”. He also threatened that any suggestion of artistic interference from Trevor or the “BB-fucking-C” would result in Aiden Fumet’s entire “stable” being no longer available to the Corporation.

Trevor does a very good Aiden Fumet, who has a strange hybrid accent – half bored aristocratic rock star and half East End stallholder. “What the BBC ’ave gotta understand is that all my boys are Time Out -approved geniuses and any more messing abaht and I’ll take ’em all to ’ollywood, where they have a proper professional attitude towards the talent and I can get two million dollars a turn, minimum.”

Trevor, George and I all agree that artists are a lot more arrogant with the BBC than they used to be. I suppose it’s down to the incredible diversity of employment options that anybody half good (or not even) is presented with these days. I mean, there was a time when there was only one channel and anybody, no matter how talented, who wanted to be on telly did so by the grace of the BBC. That was how we used to get those incredible long runs of things. People did what they were told, and if that meant doing sixty episodes of the same sitcom then that was what they did. These days, with eight million channels available the celebs call the shots, which makes life a lot more difficult for us execs.

Trevor also blames the Montreal Comedy Festival. This takes place in Canada (well it would do) and hence appearing at it is as close to playing in the United States as the vast majority of British comics are ever going to get. Which is why they all go there. Trevor and I go too whenever we can swing it, as it really is the most monumental piss-up, and the restaurants are excellent! The problem is that big Hollywood TV people also go. Well, not actually big Hollywood TV people. In fact, the minions of the minions of big Hollywood TV people. Those so low down the US TV totem pole that they have nothing more pressing to do in LA or New York. In fact, as far as I can make out, the Montreal Comedy Festival is really just an annual holiday for failed Americans because it is the one time of the year where they get to lord it over people even more desperate to make it in the States than they are themselves.

Anyway, these US non-executives swan about the place being bought drinks by British agents and pretending to be important. Then they go up to all the desperate British, Irish, Australian and Kiwi comedians and tell them that they are “just incredibly interesting and original” and that CBS will probably be very interested in turning them into Eddie Murphy probably or at the very least possibly giving them a sitcom development deal probably.

The sad truth, of course, is that the British comics swear far too much to be of any real interest to the Americans and I have to say that the Ozzies are even fouler. Also, the Montreal Comedy Festival is of only slightly more significance to American Television people than is the Big Knob Comedy Club in Brick Lane. So all that happens is that the British come home (having been drunk for a fortnight and having abused the sacred sexual trust of some poor little nineteen-year-old Canadian publicist), with eye-popping tales of impending and colossal success in the glamorous world of American sitcom. These tales are then circulated by the comedians’ managers and dutifully published in the Independent and, of course, Time Out (“Move over, Robin Williams, here comes Ivor Biggun from Slough!” “Eric and Ernie couldn’t do it, but Dog and Fish just might”). This confirmation of the stories in print then makes the managers, who originally circulated the stories, actually believe them, hence they think that they can push the BBC around.

“Listen, Sam,” Aiden Fumet regularly says to me, “I’ve been faxed by somebody very big at NBC ! So where’s the fucking sitcom deal for my boys?!”

It was so funny! Trevor is always good at telling stories about work because you see he doesn’t really care about it very much, unlike Sam, who cares desperately and actually thinks that you can “plan” comedy hits and that festivals and managers and American development deals are terribly important.

Anyway, then Sam (possibly trying to be funnier than Trevor) brought up our impending postcoital business, which I suppose I didn’t really mind because Trevor and Kit are very good pals. Although it is slightly disconcerting to discuss one’s vaginal juices at the dinner table. We all had another good laugh about it, though, because, of course, it is funny. Trevor and Sam were both being most amusing, saying things about vaginal genocide and Sam’s sperm swimming back from the fray carrying little white flags.

We actually laughed until we cried and then I’m afraid to admit I nearly did cry a bit because the truth is, hilarious though it may be, it isn’t very funny wanting kids and not being able to get them.

Kit was so lovely. He’s a set designer for the theatre (mainly fringe; he told me that recently he had to do Burnham Wood moving to Dunsinane for about five quid: “We use a lot of real twigs, and binliners, of course, can represent just about anything”). Anyway, Kit asked what we would do if we failed the test and it turned out that my body really did reject Sam’s sperm. Well, before we knew it we were discussing Trevor making a donation ! Ha! Apparently, Trevor has already done it for a lesbian couple in Crouch End that he and Kit met on the Internet. He explained that you don’t actually have to do it, you know, have sex together (“Not even for you, Lucy love,” said Trevor), you just use a turkey baster! Seems incredible to me, but apparently it’s true.

Sam laughed a lot at all this, but I could see he was a bit taken aback at the idea. He really has always been so blasé about kids that I didn’t think he’d mind what I did, but then he went quiet, so I expect he does mind really.

Life is becoming rather strange. My wife appears to be plotting to conceive with my gay friends using a turkey baster. That’ll be an interesting story to tell my mother over the next Christmas dinner.

It has made me think a bit, though. I mean, what if Sam and I aren’t compatible? What are the alternatives? Adoption? Artificial insemination? Forgetting about the whole thing? Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to do what I’ve done many a night of late and try not to think about it.